EL CAJON  Local businessman Jim Slattery loves naval aviation, and it seems he will spare no expense to preserve it wherever possible.

Two years ago, Slattery, 62, of Poway purchased a broken-down, World War II-era PBY Catalina that was being worked on at an airport in South Africa. Tuesday afternoon, the plane arrived at its final destination, Gillespie Field in El Cajon, following a 16-leg, 12,000-mile journey that lasted three weeks.

The aircraft is the 46th in Slattery’s collection and will eventually be on display in a “Greatest Generation Naval Museum,” that he intends to open in the coming months.

“It’s a labor of love,” Slattery said. “It’s about saving the airplane. It’s all about trying to preserve history.”

PBYs were patrol planes that spotted enemy submarines, ships and planes, escorted convoys, served as patrol bombers and occasionally made air-and-sea rescues. Many were manufactured in San Diego, however, Slattery’s plane was built in Canada.

At Gillespie Field in El Cajon a PBY Catalina that was built in 1944 landed. The plane is owned by James Slattery and was flown by Chief Pilot Bob Franicolaa and Mike Castillo. The plane was flown back to the ...
— Sean M. Haffey / UT San Diego

At Gillespie Field in El Cajon a PBY Catalina that was built in 1944 landed. The plane is owned by James Slattery and was flown by Chief Pilot Bob Franicola and Mike Castillo. The plane was flown back to the ...
— Sean M. Haffey / UT San Diego

At Gillespie Field in El Cajon a PBY Catalina that was built in 1944 landed. The plane is owned by James Slattery and was flown by Chief Pilot Bob Franicola and Mike Castillo. The plane was flown back to the ...
— Sean M. Haffey / UT San Diego

The PBY was originally designed to be a patrol bomber , an aircraft with a long operational range intended to locate and attack enemy transport ships at sea in order to disrupt enemy supply lines . With a mind to ...
— Sean M. Haffey / UT San Diego

The Consolidated PBY Catalina was an American flying boat of the 1930s and 1940s produced by Consolidated Aircraft . It was one of the most widely used multi-role aircraft of World War II . Catalinas served with every branch of ...
— Sean M. Haffey / UT San Diego

At Gillespie Field in El Cajon a PBY Catalina that was built in 1944 landed. The plane is owned by James Slattery and was flown by Chief Pilot Bob Franicola and Mike Castillo. The plane was flown back to the ...
— Sean M. Haffey / UT San Diego

More than five years ago, two Americans purchased the Catalina with the hope of restoring it. They spent $1.3 million on the aircraft before a disagreement led to the dissolution of their project.

Slattery purchased the plane in 2010 — he declined to say for how much — and finished the job. Just getting the plane qualified to return to the United States was a substantial undertaking, because Slattery had to fly a Federal Aviation Administration official to South Africa for an inspection.

The plane couldn’t return to the United States until it met FAA regulations, he said.

Once all the repairs were made, in all a six-year project, and it met federal guidelines, the next step was flying the plane halfway across the planet. That’s no small task for a 70-year-old aircraft that travels at a top speed of 120 miles per hour.

So Slattery sent three of his full-time employees — pilots Bob Franicola and Mike Castillo and chief mechanic Matt Voigt. The trio flew from South Africa to Namibia to Angola to Cameroon to Liberia to Brazil to French Guiana to Trinidad to Panama to Costa Rica to Mexico. The first 14 legs of the trip ranged from five hours to 13 hours apiece.

The final two legs, from Tijuana to Brown Field and then on to Gillespie Field, were significantly shorter.

On Thursday, Slattery met his crew at Brown Field and made the short final leg of the trip. As the craft, with its 104-foot-wide wings, lumbered toward the airport, it made a couple fly-bys for the handful of onlookers before finally landing.

“I’ve done a lot of fun things, a lot of unique things in aviation, and this one takes the cake,” Castillo said. “It was a dream trip.”